Panic Attacks and Anxiety

Panic attacks and anxiety. It took a weak brain to let itself be attacked by panic. Depression had substance but panic was just for flimsy-minded folk ill-equipped for what is historically the most easy of lives. In my house I kept hearing about the daughter of one of my parents friends who could not attend a meal because she had had a panic attack. Then she could not attend university. Then she could hardly leave the house. It was ridiculous. It was pitiful.
When I worked in an off-the-high-street shop there was an interesting assortment of people working there. One of my co-workers was a hysterical woman. During one lunch-break she started shaking and complaining about something. She had not taken her medicine and she was having a panic attack. We laughed. That was the kind of person who had panic attacks.
In 2003 I was in the process of trying to decide what to do with my life. My girlfriend of two years had moved to university and I was visiting with her mum.
We went to a pub for dinner. It was not a pub to make you feel at home, it might as well have been on a roundabout. The only character it had came in the form of an illustrated giraffe that grinned at me from the front of its menu. I ordered some food and my head began to spin. I became acutely aware of my heart beating. It felt like I was dying but I had no idea what I was dying from. I tried to look into the eyes of my girlfriend to see if she could tell that I was dying. She said nothing. Maybe I looked okay. That should have been reassuring, but it was not.
Soon I could not look anyone in the eye. I went outside for air and sat down on the kerb of the car-park. If it had been depression or melancholy I think there would have been some solace in the dark. There was none. I had signalled to the whole world that something was wrong, but I could offer them no explanation. Thoughts were like an alien body in my brain. I was estranged from my own mind.
We had to leave the pub. I went to my girlfriends cramped and characterless room in university halls, sat on the bed and stuck a film on. Everything I chose to do made me feel more uncomfortable. I did not want to stay still. I did not want to go out. If I laid my head on my pillow I had to sit up straight away. My eyes could not rest on anything. I tried to rationalise the situation, but at every attempt my mind reeled away from me, beyond my grasp.
A week later I completed a move to Brighton, where I was living with my best friend and his wife in a basement flat. Somehow I managed to get a job. I did not feel at home in my friends house. Worse, I did not feel at home in myself. Every night I hoped that sleep would be the end of it, but the thought of sleep made my head reel away. I sat up on the mattress. I reached for some music. I turned the music off. I laid down. My head span. I sat up. My heart beat. I could neither do one thing or another. It felt like I was damned if I did something and damned if I did nothing. There was no escape. There was no way forward. There was no way back. In that mind-set I went to bed every night. And in that mind-set I woke up every morning and in-between there must have been sleep, but all I was aware of was a continuing malfunction of the mind. That's the way I felt as I sat alone in the flat, as I walked to work, as I talked to customers on the telephone, as I sat on the pebbled beach at night, watching the characterless sea and hiding from the queues outside the clubs.
I visited my girlfriend most weekends. I left work on Friday night and caught the last train out from Clapham Junction. Delayed trains left me standing around Clapham Junction at midnight most Fridays. It was a miserable place, littered with miserable faces and drunken voices.
One time, I tried to return to Brighton after being at my girlfriends for the weekend. On that occasion it was a bright Sunday afternoon, but the whole journey was particularly unpleasant. Time did not pass in the usual way. Every second opened up into an expanding and seemingly limitless discomfort. I could not look out of the window. I could not look at anything. All eyes were witness to my increasing unease. I tried to fit in. I took a book out of my bag. I couldn't focus on any words. It made my mind crawl, just the thought of it. I held the book in my hand, like normal people sometimes did when they were thinking about something. I had nothing I could think about. I just looked weird. I tried to close my eyes and pretend I was asleep but when I closed my eyes I had that feeling, that wake-up-before-I-hit-the-ground feeling, forcing me to live in wide-eyed discomfort at the horror of this train journey.
Every instant I wanted to get off the train. The only thing stopping me was the horrible feeling that the discomfort would still be there engulfing the platform, the car-park I would briskly walk through and the toilet cubicle I would hide in. And if I went in that toilet cubicle, how would I ever leave? I couldn't bear to stay on the train. I couldn't bear to get off the train.
At Clapham Junction I had to change trains. I tried. Changing trains is a simple task. It involves getting off one train, finding the train to take you forward and getting on that train. Even in the misery of Clapham Junction it is a simple task. For the modern mind that has achieved so much, it is a simple task. Yet my own modern mind felt on the verge of implosion or explosion as I imagined taking my seat amongst the other passengers. I lingered in the walkway above the platform, unable to go forward, unable to go backward. I took out my phone, like normal people sometimes did. The difference between myself and normal people is that I had no reason to look at my phone, other than to appear normal. It was as if I was hoping that I would slip back into normality just by following the same patterns of behaviour as normal people. I stopped to ask the guard something I already knew. 'Platform 4' he replied. He looked at me as if I was crazy. Maybe I was crazy. Normal people do not ask questions just to test how normal they look.
I phoned my girlfriend. The train back to her would take less time than the train to Brighton. If I went back, I might never be able to leave again, but at least there felt like somewhere. I caught the train back.
After a couple of days I had to leave her. I went back to Brighton and tried to find a way to live outside of my mind. I was sat in Burger King before going to work. Inside the restaurant there was a large television screen blasting out loud music. Nobody could hear me and nobody could really see me. That was the closest I could find to peace of mind. A song by Snow Patrol came on. I hated Snow Patrol, but not right then.
I finished my burger, fries and two sachets of ketchup. I walked to Hove to go to work. On the way I was wrestling to keep my mind in one place. The sun came out ahead of me and I started to sing the Snow Patrol that I had heard in Burger King. I started to break down on the leafy suburban street. For a brief moment, it felt like progress. I would take solid, tangible misery over the bedlam that had taken the place of my mind... but I was denied even this comfort. The tears would not come. The misery evaporated and my brain lurched. Perhaps I could stop there on that street, but if I stopped how would I ever move again? If I cried, how would I ever stop?
I didn't have a choice. I had to force myself onward. I had to force myself to work. I had to keep as much semblance of normality as I could, perhaps believing that if I kept following the rules, one day my brain would click back into place.
This is how I lived my life for six months.
At some point, during that six months, my girlfriend was visiting. She was no longer my girlfriend but she visited all the same. It was time for me to leave her and for me to go to work. We were stood out the back of a shop. I tried to look at her. I couldn't look at her. I tried to look at strangers. I couldn't look at them. I tried the pavement. There was nowhere my eyes could rest. The very act of seeing was agitating me. I could not bare to be aware of looking at one thing or another. Not here. Not there. Not anywhere. It was ridiculous. It was pitiful.
'Are you okay?'
The question gave me vertigo. I knew it was irrational. I knew it was crazy, but there was no way I could be outside of it. The vertigo consumed me. I looked at her. I looked away. I caught the eye of someone walking past. I looked away. I caught the eye of someone else. I looked away. I looked to the sky. I looked away. I couldn't form a single thought. I was suffocating inside myself. This is how modern people died. Standing in an alleyway, silently suffocating inside themselves.
My former girlfriend said I had to come back with her and we would go to the GP in her town. It was a small quiet town and I knew I could disappear inside the thick breeze-blocked walls of her room.
I nodded. I phoned the employment agency I worked for. The woman who answered was incredibly kind. She was more human than professional. 'If you just need to drop in for a cup of tea...' Thank you. If it had been depression or melancholy I think the kindness would have moved me. As it was, I was spectating everything from a distance. I was witnessing the demise of my self and I had no control over it. My mind was sinking and I had become a helpless passenger that could not break free from it. I could not save it.
We went back to her halls. The following day we tried to walk to the doctors. In her university town there is a nice park with a stream. As soon as we stepped into the park I needed to sit down. I was trying to push myself through, relying on the most basic motor skills of my brain to keep me walking in the direction of the doctors. I couldn't do it. The park was unbearable. I had to leave. The trouble was that the world outside the park was even more unbearable. I had to move. I had to stay. Every choice was unthinkable. I forced myself up. The simplest of tasks in any era of the human race. Stand up. Stand up. And my head swam. And my head continued to swim as I forced myself to take every step toward the doctor.
I had hated the idea of going to the doctor but I had no idea what else to do. I knew that I couldn't tell him what was wrong. I knew that there was nothing wrong. On the outside nothing had changed. It was my own internal, personal and unexplainable horror.
I can't remember what he looked like. Once again, everything was troubling my eyes. I couldn't look at any person or object for longer than it took me to realise I was looking at something. It was pathetic.
'Are you stressed?' said the doctor.
All of a sudden I was crying. Three words reduced me to a wreck. 'No,' I said. 'I don't think so.'
He may have checked my blood. He may have checked other things. I can't remember. His conclusion was this: 'You have anxiety. You have to rest.'
The word made me feel incredibly uncomfortable. 'Anxiety.' It was the most horrendous diagnosis. My mind was broken. It was weak. I couldn't trust my mind so what could I trust? Where could I go? Perhaps the worst thing was that anxiety had no beginning and no end. It was simply a state of being. It may have had no cause and if there was no cause how could there be an end? Anxiety appeared limitless; a vortex without exit.
The word anxiety held an amount of power that no word has ever really held for me. I do not know why. The only thing I know is that when someone would say 'Have you got anxiety?' or 'Is it an anxiety attack?' my mind would lurch to a place that left me dizzy, lost and helpless.
One day at work I was really trying to force my mind through the day. Everything made me uneasy. I tried to drink tea and look normal because I needed something to do with my hands. Normal people drank tea so I would drink tea. I couldn't drink it. I got coffee. I got a soft drink. I got water. The idea of drinking any of them made me feel worse. I ended up with row of liquid-filled plastic cups beside my keyboard. I tried to read the notes on my computer screen but my mind was somewhere else. The only thing I hoped for every day was that I would not be noticed. That day I failed. A guy I worked with turned to me. 'Are you alright?'
A hasty 'yeah' was my reply and I tried not to think about it or about me or about the situation. 'You look anxious.'
I had to stand up. I walked along the characterless office full of blank screens and blanker faces and headed for the toilets. I stopped. If I went into the cubicle, how would I ever come out? I had to act quickly. I had to look normal. I walked to the photocopier, took a piece of blank paper, returned to my desk and tried to disappear.
There I was, a modern man. I was powerless. If I had a right mind to hope, it would have hoped to pass the day as just another piece of unnoticed machinery. I existed and that is all. I could perform rudimentary tasks and that was all. I could change nothing. I could not go forward. I could not go back.
Once I walked to the marina. I sat down on a bench. I walked home. Nothing had changed. Several times I went into the emptiest pub I could find. I had to leave after two sips. I could not tell anyone what was happening. The only person who knew was my former girlfriend. Often I would browse a music shop, unable to concentrate on any title on the CD, but doing it just to keep me hidden from the world for half an hour. I ordered a hot dog from the van in Churchill Square. I had to walk away before it was ready.
There I was, the product of human evolution. As far as I knew that could have been me for the rest of my life and I would not have had the strength to do anything about it. It lasted at an unrelenting intensity for half a year. During that time I did not find any way of coping. I was as helpless after six months as I was at the beginning. Somehow it eased. One day I was able to rationalise. I had some control back. It lingered for a long time after but I felt less helpless.
Anxiety did not kill me but it did not make me stronger. My mind had given way under the lightest of pressure. It had not seen war. It had not endured starvation. It had not struggled for any one of the comforts that surrounded me, and yet it could not cope. My modern mind was defeated by the luxuries of a peaceful life.
Perhaps anxiety is a modern ailment, symbollic of our inability to cope with an increasingly alien world. Perhaps it is the way we modern people die, silently suffocating inside ourselves while our bodies walk around doing the things we think they should be doing. Perhaps anxiety is a warning sign as important to our survival as melting ice-caps and holes in the ozone - perhaps it is an indicator that we are forcing our minds to live in a mad house and our minds are refusing, crying out for a different way of life.
Or perhaps I was right all along and I am a weak-minded man who could not cope with moving to an unfamiliar city and the end of a relationship. Perhaps the sad truth is that I am ill-equipped for what is historically the most easy of lives.